Upstairs @ TMoms

20 Years of Street Art Culture

From the first tag to the latest wheat paste, upstairs at TMom’s has been home to a rich history of local & international street art. This is an ever changing gallery: an un-curated & spontaneous outpouring of creativity by local & traveling artists and the countless visitors who leave their unique mark here nightly.

Two Brothers & 5000 Umbrellas

The birth of the upstairs as a vibrant art space is in part tied to a 1999 exhibition by brothers Noah & Nathan Rice. That year the Brothers Rice brought their umbrella wheat pastes we’d been admiring around South Street to Mom’s. All 5000 of them.

Stone the Crows is all about surprises. Talk about weather with scrub jays, and listen to some prose and poetry and prettiness and putridity with a handful of writerly pups. Hang out with Meow Meow Pow Pow and HOOT Review, as well as poets and prose-r-s ™ as they read selections from their dope collections and scrounge up some trouble. Drink half priced drafts & grab some free literary goodies!

Available now from Mason Jar Press, Erin Dorney’s debut is a collection of erasure poems sourced from media interviews with Shia LaBeouf. Erasure is a form of poetry created by erasing words from an existing text and framing the result on the page as a poem. The poems in “I Am Not Famous Anymore” are sourced from interviews published in Rolling Stone, Dazed, GQ, The Guardian, The New York Times, Playboy, and Cosmo Girl, among other publications.

Enjoy this event with our Pierogi Thursday specials:
50¢ pierogi from noon-10pm
& half off all drafts 5-7pm and 10-11pm

Jeremy M. Brownlowe travels the country under the moniker “Typewriter Troubadour,” composing original pieces of poetry on a manual typewriter for curious pedestrians. This event marks the release of his debut, Angels of the Underground, a collection of rich, raw, and tender poems from an explorer navigating new frontiers of gender identity, sexuality, and human relationship.

Set in New York City, Angels offers Brownlowe’s unique perspective as a trans guy through unflinching portraits of male vulnerability, queerness, addiction, lost love, and modern alienation. With humor, grit, and ease, Brownlowe weaves stories of the neglected subjects of the City, taking notes in poems, which he offers up to us in this compelling collection.

Breadcrumbs Mag is an online literary & arts blog that acts as an exercise in motivation and shared inspiration, a chance to create when otherwise your professional life might not give you reason to, an outlet to plant the seeds of an idea and watch where they can go — through your own mind or someone else’s.

Enjoy half off all drafts before and after the event from 5-7pm and 10-11pm.

Enjoy this event with our Pierogi Thursday specials:
50¢ pierogi from noon-10pm
& half off all drafts 5-7pm and 10-11pm

Donations will be collected for Project SAFE, an all-volunteer grassroots organization providing advocacy and support for women working in street economies. SAFE’s mission is to promote human rights-based public health among women working in the sex and drug trades on the street in Philadelphia.

Shy Watson is stopping by for a reading of her new book, Cheap Yellow! She will be joined by other local poets & will have copies of the book available for sale!

Shy’s poems are abruptly smart, a little violent, devious and ongoing, legendary, mythic, not prosey though a little like the voice of god if god decided to speak more collectively for a while. Shy’s poems to me are so so worth it. And they are crafty – also like god.—Eileen Myles, author of Afterglow